Customer Reviews: Read 126 more reviews...
 Deep June 5, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am new to the genius of CS Lewis. I read the Narnia series as a kid, but have not read books for years, until recently. This book was deep, and full of the genius Lewis is known for. He expresses the pain of losing his wife, and the questions that those who mourn often work through, but are too guilty to express publically. The work is awesome, and may help some who are going through similar feelings of greif. Skip the aknowlegement at the beginning by Madeline Engle, I am not familiar with her writing, but have heard the name. I am surprised she was chosen to write the aknowlegement, but it is an amusing contrast to Lewis' intellect and spiritual understanding. The aknowlegement exudes an attitude of confidence in spiritual issues, yet reveals a cluelessness and spiritual blindess found largely in todays new age books. It does not belong in a CS Lewis book.
A Book of Great Beauty and Intelligence April 23, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Although Lewis was, of course, a renowned and devout Christian, this book will speak to anyone who's lost someone with whom they shared real love. All of the questions, angers, and doubts that fill the mind during the numbing time following great loss are shared in the first person, generously, by Lewis. This is, I think, a beautiful, powerful, and deeply healing work.
 A Grief Observed April 19, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This small book is a blessing to those who have experienced a deep and pressing grief. It shows a bit of the journey C.S. Lewis made through his grief experience. It was a brief, beautiful read.
A Grief Analyzed March 27, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Originally published under a pseudonym, this short book is a thoroughly reasoned but heart-felt analyzation of grief from the private writing journal of intellectual author and academia giant, C.S. Lewis. The object of his grief is the love of his life, his rare intellectual equal and friend whom he met later in life and fell deeply in love with, making her his wife.
Born Atheist, C.S. Lewis became a committed Christian, but spent part of his journalized pages in honest reflection of his anger at God and acknowledgement of fragile faith while in the throes of traumatic, life-altering grief. He boldly wonders and writes the thoughts and words most familiarly held at some point in the minds of others bereaved over their most beloved and cherished.
From page 23: "Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief. Apparently the faith - I thought it faith - which enables me to pray for the other dead has seemed strong only because I have never really cared, not desperately, whether they existed or not. Yet I thought I did."
After other thoughts about risks and beliefs, this is said, "And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high, until you find that you are playing not for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world. Nothing will shake a man - or at any rate a man like me - out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover himself."
On page 25, C.S. sees the human side of grieving when others try to console him with spiritual avenues of comfort: "Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand."
The social leprosy of bereavement is also mentioned on a couple of pages, including this: "Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers."
At the end, C.S. Lewis seems to reconcile himself to a conclusion about grieving: "For, as I have discovered, passionate grief does not link us with the dead but cuts us off from them," as he tries to go about cherishing his beloved's every memory with gladness, a smile and a laugh. Not for long, however, is this a workable plan as he writes the next day's journal entry more in line with the natural phases of grief: "An admirable programme. Unfortunately it can't be carried out. tonight al the hells of young grief have opened again; the mad words, the bitter resentment, the fluttering in the stomach, the nightmare unreality, the wallowed-in tears. For in grief nothing `stays put.' One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?"
As do we all of bereavement ask ourselves when finding that as much as we try clawing our way up the spiral, we suddenly lose our grasp, totally at the mercy of our humanness and that quality that never dies - love.
Profound and moving March 15, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Lewis, a confirmed intellectual bachelor, almost comically stumbled into a deeply romantic and erotic marriage late in life. An American poet, Joy Davidman, while visiting him in England was stricken with breast cancer. Her visa expired and she faced a mindlessly bureaucratic forced expulsion which probably would have killed her. Lewis agreed to what he expected to be a marriage of convenience, giving her a right to stay in England long enough to die peaceably. Unaccountably, almost impishly, she recovered and they became man and wife in fact and not just pro forma. Lewis was delighted, swept away and overwhelmed; he became radiantly happy.
This brief moment of joy, was snatched from him, however, as the cancer reasserted itself. Lewis poured out his profound grief at the death of his wife on paper, sharing his thoughts, feelings, longings in a journal which became A Grief Observed. Unlike some of his other works, which are witty, philosophical, almost whimsical at times, this book is deeply personal and profoundly painful, almost raw in its emotional intensity. It is also a deep testament to Lewis's faith. Like all humanity, he faced loss and suffering and death. Lewis, like Job, transforms is somehow able to hand over all this darkness to the Lord in an act of sheer faith.
My own father recently died. I found Lewis's book to be a great comfort and a powerful guide through the grieving process. I strongly recommend this to anyone who has recently lost a loved one.
One note on the edition. This edition contains a foreword by Madeline L'Engle. The foreword enhanced the book, but earlier editions had a longer foreword (or possibly an afterword) by a male friend of Lewis which I found even more moving. I particularly remember a joke in the earlier edition about Lewis being surprised by Joy. If you've read the older edition, know that the supporting material is different.
|
